Over the summer, the trail cams ran and we got three months of amazing footage around the den! We saw a variety of animals, such as woodchucks, deer, a possum, and raccoons. And the biggest surprise was that an adolescent fox came by to visit.

This is the video of the adolescent fox. It might be one of the fox kits that we monitored, or it could be from another fox family that we weren’t fortunate enough to monitor.

Here’s an adult male buck foraging. Look at those antlers!

There was also a woodchuck that kept coming to this spot and just lying down on the ground. Here’s two videos of it.

There was also a possum that came at night.

And lastly, a raccoon! It came to the den very often over the summer, and it only came at night.

I was feeling a bit nostalgic, so I decided to upload two videos of the fox kits. They’re from April, so they hadn’t moved out yet.

Enjoy 🙂

Some fox kits playing around and wrestling each other.

This one’s a bit lower resolution than the others, but that’s because I decided to compile a series of videos together so that you wouldn’t have to watch ten videos. Their parents killed a squirrel for them to eat and they spend the majority of their time just biting it but it’s only until the end that I think they start eating it.

A couple of weeks ago, we tried to set up a camera trap outside of what we believed to be an alternate entrance to the fox den. However, after two weeks of looking at the images, it appears that the foxes have moved out and have started to wander around the forest. But on the bright side, we will try to continue to track the new generation of foxes next year! So stay tuned.

This is more of a public service announcement than a post about the foxes.

So a couple days ago, a black bear was spotted roaming around Middletown, here in Monmouth County. Black bears are not commonly found in Monmouth County so it probably came from somewhere up north. Yesterday night, unfortunately, it was put down by the police. The New Jersey State Fish and Game Department found the bear in a tree in Union Beach and decided they had to put it down. According to their Facebook post on the incident, they had do it in the interest for public safety. You can find more information here, courtesy of the Asbury Park Press.

This situation makes one think about the whole “man versus nature” idea. We tend to think of the world in two distinct boundaries: civilization and the wild. The general notion is that humans and animals cannot coexist in the same area. Obviously, our world is separated from nature and we can’t just combine the two. However, it is possible to cooperate with the wilderness instead of destroying it, taking over it, and pushing it away. I highly recommend watching the last episode of Planet Earth II to everyone, as it focused on cities and how animals have “adapted” to live with humans. Even the deer and foxes we capture on our camera traps seem to be living peacefully among humans. The fox den is so close to a road (and our school) that you can hear the sound of passing cars. Some animals are starting to learn how to live around us, but can we learn to live around them?

What do the sleek and elusive foxes do after hours? After all, they are nocturnal animals. The most recent photos we have of a fox kit out and about during the night was taken on May 18th. We are not capturing as much footage now as we were before, suggesting that the kits may be moving on. In the photo above, the kit seems to be alone. Maybe, if he is old enough, he is hunting. Here a slew of nighttime photos we collected around a month ago:

The kits can be seen playing with each other and basically doing the same things as they do during the day time. The last photo is somewhat eerie, as a few of the foxes are staring directly at the camera. One can only imagine what they are thinking…

“Jim, look at this. What is it? It’s staring right at us”

“I think it’s a bear. Mom said they look funny.”

“Let’s stare at it until it stops staring”

“If we don’t move it won’t notice us…”

“Can we eat it?”

These suspicious kits don’t seem to be doing much during the night but they do look like they’re up to something. We’ll have to wait to see if the kits have truly left the den. There are still photos of them (although only a few) so they are definitely still there. We will keep making new posts of this new night segment, “The Den”, as we get more information. Stay posted if you want to learn and see more about these night walker’s activities.

In one of my previous videos, a male deer is shown with budding antlers. You can see it below.

Now, after a week, the deer has much longer antlers!

We are not sure if it is the same deer, but the amount of growth in one week is incredible. The herd of deer that this male seems to lead seems to have much more than the one female seen in the video. It appears to have at least four!

In the coming weeks, we will probably be able to see the growth of this young buck’s antlers and hopefully, some baby deer.

Here are some new videos I’ve posted!

This is actually a two 30 second clips of the woodchuck mashed together.

This is an older video of the fox mom nursing her kits. I thought it was really cute so I decided to publish it.

This week wasn’t the best week in terms of the amount of pictures and videos that we were able to get. The camera in front of the new den had broken, so we were not able to get any videos from that area this week. However, our best videos from every other week are posted on Kelly’s YouTube Channel, if you want to check it out.

While we did not get any videos from the new den this week, we did get quite a few pictures with a wide variety of animals. Below is a picture of a woodchuck. We have also seen woodchucks around the old den and around campus! The camera by the old den captured some very nice video of the woodchuck walking around and climbing a tree. This video can be seen on Kelly’s YouTube Channel, under the title Woodchuck Waddle.

The camera also picked up many pictures of raccoons at night. Since they are native to North America, extremely common, and their population size is growing, this is not surprising.

As expected, many deer videos and pictures were taken this week. Deer are found in such large numbers that people have started to consider them as pests.

Through the videos, we have found some development in the deer, specifically the male ones. One of our other writers, Kelly, will be writing an in-depth blog post on that topic soon.

Unfortunately, we the camera did not capture much of the fox kits this week. We did get a few pictures, so one of our other authors, Aruj, will be writing a blog post detailing their activities soon.

Overall though, we have seen a variety of animals around the dens, so hopefully our cameras will capture more next week. Remember, all of our best videos will be uploaded in the YouTube Channel linked above!

In the other blog posts, we couldn’t upload videos because we didn’t have a Premium account. However, we’ve figured out a work-around, so I thought we could share some of the videos that we have gotten in the past month!

^ Some early footage of the fox kits playing around their den.

^ Most of the fox kits can be seen just sitting around or nuzzling each other. They look like they’re waiting for their mother to come back.

^A lot happens in this video. The mother first drops a dead animal in front of the kits, and the kits attempt to eat it. Then, many of the fox kits run around in a circle through the forest, then realizes that their siblings are nursing and decide that that’s probably the best thing to do. So they all join in.

^ This is a video of a whitetail deer that actually has two tiny budding antlers. His friend comes along around 5 seconds later.

^ This is a video of a northern flicker. They’re part of the woodpecker family. They are common in New Jersey.